


All I Ever Do

by quietrook



Category: Eerie Crests (Webcomic)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, childhood crushes, giraffes that kind of look like elephants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-07 09:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10356903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietrook/pseuds/quietrook
Summary: In which both Margolins fall for the same guy.





	1. It's a Giraffe!

It was an elephant.

That’s what Dallas concluded, after staring at Hazel’s artwork for five minutes. She had painted an elephant (?). He knelt on the ground while his sister waited patiently beside him, expectant. He had debated between a few things, trying to find the right answer.

“It's a very nice elephant, Hazlenut,” he told her, and she heaved a frustrated sigh.\

“Dallas! It's not an elephant!”

“It looks just like one!” He protested. 

“Mally, what do you think?” she asked as her brother's best friend entered the room with sodas and oreos.  

He set them on the ground and took a look. After a moment he declared, “Giraffe.”

Hazel squealed in  excitement and hugged Malek around the middle.

“Yes! Not a dumb elephant.” She stuck her tongue out at Dallas.

“But it's gray.”

“It's a  _ special  _ giraffe,  _ duh. _ ”

“What's that, then?”

“Um, it's obviously the tongue. Giraffes have really long tongues to reach leaves in trees.”

Dallas didn't know what to say to that. He looked at Malek, who shook his head lightly, and sighed.

“You're right, it's clearly a giraffe. I'm sorry.” Dallas ruffled his sister's hair.

“Dally, stop!” But she was giggling now. 

Dallas grinned with almost evil intent and started to tickle her. She shrieked with laughter and begged Malek for help. He held his hands up as if to say,  _ I'm not getting involved.  _ Dallas only stopped when their mother came in the room to tell them it was getting late and Hazel needed to go to bed. She pouted and gave her brother a hug first, and then Malek.

“I'll come by and see you again soon, alright?” Malek promised, making her smile again.

“Alright, alright,” Dallas said, gently pushing her towards the door. “Go to bed, squirt.”

She stuck her tongue out one last time before closing the door behind her.

“Well,” Malek started, tone light,”we're alone now.”

“Yeah, haha,” Dallas responded nervously. He grabbed a Pepsi and popped the top with a loud fizz. It sprayed up and out, covering his favorite striped sweater. He let out as quiet of a fuck as he could manage, lasting until the spray stopped. He glared up at Malek.

“Hey,” Malek immediately said. “I didn't shake them up, I  _ swear. _ ”

Dallas kept frowning, but looked down at his soaked top. When he looked back up, Malek was covering his eyes.

“Go ahead, change, I'm not looking.”

Though he appreciated it greatly, Dallas rolled his eyes. 

“I'm wearing a binder, dumbass. It's fine.” His stomach fluttered nervously as he spoke; Malek had never really seen him in just a binder before. They were close, though, and he trusted him. Still, he could feel the heat of Malek's curious eyes watching as he pulled the sweater over his head and tossed it in the hamper. He stood up to grab a towel, shivered once at the sudden lack of warmth, and started to blot the carpet where the drink had spilled. Eventually, he just sat on the towel and looked back at Malek.

“Anyway.”

Malek’s smile was wide, threatening to crack. Dallas sighed.

“Go ahead.”

His best friend burst into laughter. He managed to get an apology out between breaths, but Dallas just smiled. Malek had the most pleasant laugh he had ever heard. It filled you up with light, made you feel high. He couldn't get enough of it.

When Malek finally calmed down, he stuffed three oreos into his mouth and grinned.

_ Ah, yes,  _ Dallas thought.  _ The object of my affections. _

“You're gonna choke and I'm gonna laugh,” he said matter-of-factly. 

Malek swallowed one cookie and said around the other two something Dallas assumed meant, “But then you'd save my life, right? Heimlich the fuck out of me, Margolin.”

“Okay, actually, that was proven to be not effective.”

“Okay, actually, I'm pretty sure you're wrong?” Malek countered.

They stared at each other for a moment before they both grabbed their phones to search. After a minute, Dallas was proven wrong, and Malek grabbed his guitar.

“ _ You were wrong, I was right,”  _ he sang pleasantly.

Dallas threw a pillow at him.

“Hey!” 

Malek set his guitar aside and the night devolved into wrestles and throwing pillows. They tumbled across the room for a little bit before Malek finally pinned Dallas to the floor.

“I win. Again,” he grinned.

Dallas was too out of breath to do anything but nod. He stared up at Malek.  _ God, his eyes are beautiful. _ As he tried to catch his breath, he became suddenly aware of Malek’s arms beside his head, of the sweet scent of his breath, of his leg between Dallas's. He pushed Malek off.

“Okay, you win.” His heart was beating too fast. He drank what remained of his Pepsi and laid on the floor.

Malek laid beside him.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about, Dally?”

“The meaning of the universe,” he replied. He closed his eyes. “Do you ever think about how small we are in the grand scheme of things? How little we matter compared to everything else?”

“Mm, I disagree,” Malek replied. “I think it means everything we do matters even  _ more.  _ You know the same essence that makes us up once made up stars? We are made of  _ stars _ , Dally, just like the ones on your ceiling. We are all so important. We can't let our starstuff go to waste.”

Dallas mulled it over for a moment. He felt the light on his closed eyelids, the prickle of air conditioning on his bare stomach.

“So you're saying, carpe diem?”

“Exactly. Do what you want to do, not what other people want you to do.” 

In a perfect world, Dallas might have listened. In a perfect world, he might have leaned over and kissed his best friend. In a perfect world, anxiety didn't exist and Dallas didn't hate himself.

But this was not a perfect world. Dallas  _ did  _ have crippling anxiety, and an abundance of self-loathing. He could ruin everything.

He didn't seize the day. He opened his eyes and looked over at Malek, who was smiling at him. Would he hate Dallas if he knew? Would he be disgusted? Would they still be friends?

Dallas sat up quickly and rubbed his head.

“All this serious talk is making me sleepy. Let's go to bed.” 

“Okay.” 

If Dallas didn't know better, he would have thought Malek sounded almost… disappointed. But that didn't make any sense.

Malek turned around so Dallas could change out of his binder and into a nightshirt. The green-haired boy clambered into his bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin. Malek set a pillow on the floor and turned off the lights before stretching out.

_ You can sleep up here, _ Dallas wanted to say.  _ With me. _

But he didn't. Instead he turned away from Malek and tried not to remember what it felt like to be pinned under his best friend. 

“Dallas?”

“Y-yeah?” Dallas stammered, his cheeks warm in the darkness.

There was silence for a moment, followed by a soft exhalation. Then Malek’s voice: 

“Thanks for trusting me.” 

Dallas smiled softly. “‘Course, man. Love you.”

“Love you.”

There was the sound of Malek rustling as he turned, getting settled into a comfortable position. As comfortable as it got on the floor, anyway. The quiet of breathing becoming even, of crickets outside the window. Dallas stared at the moon through his window.

“Night, Dally.” Malek’s voice was soft as cotton; he was already half asleep.

“Night, Mal.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pop

_ POP! _

 

Bubblegum stuck to the sides of Dallas’s mouth as his bubble popped, and he let out a groan. Getting gum off your lips was practically the hardest thing to do. As he went to work picking at it with his short nails, his friends kept talking around him.

“I’m just saying, in the event of an apocalypse, you can’t rely on ranged weapons,” Malek continued, and then took a bite of his apple.

“Crossbows,” Poppy countered. “You can make bolts from pretty much whatever. Reliable ranged weapon right there, Mal.”

“Alright, what do you think, Dally?” 

Malek turned to Dallas, whose fingers were stuck to his mouth with gum.

“Uh…”

Poppy covered her mouth, but let out a series of giggles. Malek laughed wholeheartedly, and Dallas smiled sheepishly. He pulled his fingers away, bringing strands of gum with it.

“Well… in the middle of an apocalypse, you could easily run out of materials to make bolts,” he said, using the gum on his fingers to pull of the rest of the gum around his mouth. “So… I gotta go with Malek. Sorry, Pops.”

Poppy rolled her eyes. “Typical Dallas.” She smiled, though, and kept eating her lunch. 

“Hey,” Malek started, pieces of apple still in his mouth. “We all still hanging out at Dally’s after practice?”

“Absolutely,” Poppy said with a smile at Dallas, who blinked in surprise.

“Did someone forget to tell  _ Dally  _ something?”

The other two laughed, and Dallas was pulled into a three-way hug. He didn’t mind in the least, he just liked giving them a little shit sometimes.

After practice, they all walked to the Margolin house together, discussing baseball and their upcoming game against a neighboring school.

“I wish we had a designated hitter,” Dallas was saying halfheartedly, chewing at his nails. They were already short and now he was anxiously biting them down to the quick.

“You’re gonna do fine, man, you always do.” Malek reached over to squeeze his best friend in a short hug, a hard thing to do while walking.

Dallas shrugged. He hated batting, as much as he could hate anything that was part of his favorite sport. He was always afraid he was going to mistime his swing and miss completely; he was afraid he was going to bat straight into the other team’s glove; he was just afraid. He watched Malek as the conversation moved on to something else. Malek’s face always lit up when he spoke. It was always lit, even when he didn’t speak. Malek was the sun, and Dallas was like the dark side of the moon. Unseen, forgotten.

He huddled into himself as they reached his house. He greeted his mom and his sister quietly before heading straight back to his room. The three of them were barely settled in on the floor when Hazel burst into the room with a piece of paper.

“Mallllek!” She hugged him around the knees as he was trying to sit down, and he stumbled a little.

“Haha, hey, Hazel,” he said, bending down to fluff her hair a little.

She giggled.

“What’s that you got there?” he asked her, disentangling her from his legs and sitting down.

“I drew it for you!” She smiled, one of her missing teeth in full view. 

The picture she handed him was of a knight and a princess. The princess was saving the knight. Leaning on his hand, Dallas smiled.

“Thank you,” Malek told her. “I’ll hang it on my wall as soon as I get home.”

Hazel grinned wider and launched herself at him. She ended up sitting in his lap with him braiding her hair as he, Dallas, and Poppy talked about the latest involvement in the baseball team’s DND game. 

Last week, Dallas hadn’t been able to go so they had taken control of his character for the session. And by they, that meant Blake. And Blake got Dallas’s character flat out killed.

“It’s okay… I, uh. Didn’t even really like him that much,” Dallas had said at the time, nervously scratching his arm.

Blake had just shrugged, not apologized.

Now Dallas was trying to draft a new character.

“What about, like… a bard, but they’re a stand up comedian?”

“Mhm,” Poppy said appreciatively, flipping through a book. “You should make them a compulsive liar, too.”

Dallas grinned and stared up at his ceiling. Stars looked back at him.

“A compulsively lying comedian. The party probably doesn’t even know they’re a bard. Oh, and they’re nonbinary because we need more representation and --”

“Dallas, I love you,” Poppy laughed. She nudged him with her foot. “You know my little Chia will be best friends with them, yeah?”

“I’d hope so,” he smiled. 

“Done!”

Hazel stood up and spun in a circle graciously for Dallas and Poppy so they could see Malek’s handiwork. Having braided his own sister’s hair many times, he did a pretty good job. Hazel was smiling her smallest, happiest smile.   
_ Oh no, _ Dallas thought. He glanced at Malek; he didn’t notice.  By the time Dallas sent his sister off to bed she was sporting a full-face flush, and Dallas put his head in his hands. He’d seen his sister like this before - she was sporting a sizeable crush on none other than the man Dallas himself was in love with.


End file.
